


gonna fight 'em all (seven nation army couldn't hold me back)

by aletterinthenameofsanity



Series: tell my father (this is my life) [9]
Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Assassins & Hitmen, Character Death, Character Study, Dark, Drabble, Gen, No Apocalypse, however Cha-Cha really wants to change that, the plot comes charging in, with a vengeance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-09
Updated: 2019-03-09
Packaged: 2019-11-14 00:39:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,371
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18042137
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aletterinthenameofsanity/pseuds/aletterinthenameofsanity
Summary: On October 1, 1989, forty three women around the world gave birth simultaneously, despite none of them showing any sign of pregnancy at the beginning of the day. It is a well-known fact that Reginald Hargreeves, most peculiar of billionaires, acquired seven of these children.But what became of the rest?





	gonna fight 'em all (seven nation army couldn't hold me back)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Silverbird22](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Silverbird22/gifts).



> Title is from "Seven Nation Army" by the White Stripes.
> 
> Am I implying that Taylor Swift was one of the forty three? Yes, in the Umbrella Academy universe, I am most definitely saying that she was one of the forty three.

_There are no heroes..._

_in life, the monsters win._

**-George R. R. Martin**

 

On October 1, 1989, forty three women around the world gave birth simultaneously, despite none of them showing any sign of pregnancy at the beginning of the day. It is a well-known fact that Reginald Hargreeves, most peculiar of billionaires, acquired seven of these children.

But what became of the rest?

Of the thirty six that remained, twenty five died immediately, from various circumstances- the cold, being born in water, lack of nutrition, bad births where a c-section was the only thing that could have helped but couldn't be accomplished.

Of the the eleven that remained, five got put up for adoption and were lost in various foster systems.

One child, born to a nomadic Romani woman in the middle of nowhere, was never discovered by Hargreeves. Another, born to a woman on a yet-to-be-discovered Pacific island, was also never found. One, whose ability manifested itself as just an extreme talent for songwriting, went her whole life without realizing her powers.

The remaining three of them disappeared. One of the children had the ability to manipulate time loops and accidentally, in the third day she was born, sent herself and two others hurtling through time. She landed in Ancient Pompeii, where she was adopted by a Roman centurion and his wife and ended up being buried by ash from a volcano.

Of the two that were also transferred into the past, one landed in the Mayan empire a decade before the Spanish Conquistadors were set to conquer Mexico. She ends up dying of smallpox a few years after the conquistadors arrive, her Gift for accelerating the growth of plants not helping her against the onslaught of disease.

The last one was transported to 1874, where he was found and placed in an orphanage. The nun who picked him up off the front stoop looked at the child, eerily quiet, and later told the other nuns that he sent a chill down her spine.

The child came to be named Jack.

-

(This is the story of little Number Eight, who did not even know he was Number Eight, and how he turned himself into a weapon even when Reginald Hargreeves didn't have a chance to get to him. This is a boy who got a name but not a family, who was always a bit wrong and never had siblings to help him get better. He was raised in a run-down orphanage, witnessing the horrors of child labor and industrialization and the ravages of tuberculosis.

This is about a boy that slipped through the cracks of an orphanage, who only stood out in the fact that when he left the orphanage at age fourteen, not a single soul noticed his absence.

This is a story about a boy who grew up to be an assassin just like a boy that might have been his brother, but with one very, very important difference in motivation.) 

- 

Jack has never really cared about any one his whole life.

He's not a sadist, technically; he does not take pleasure in others’ pain. Rather, from a young age he has taken an interest in how people react to torture, cataloging what works best and what doesn't work when trying to achieve the goals he wants.

And what's rather useful for his experiments (specifically in allowing him to conduct a number more experiments than nature would have allowed him to originally), is the strange Gift he has always had. He's never been entirely certain where his Gift came from, but he's not complaining. 

He's always been able to sense emotional vulnerabilities in the people around him. He knows, by looking at a person, what their number one fear is. It's always been a rather interesting experiment, figuring out how to manipulate and hurt people based off of the vulnerabilities he senses.

And then when Jack hits age sixteen, he figures out how to sense what the weakest point on a person's body is, is able to instinctively know the easiest way to kill someone.

This leads to an even further expansion of the kinds of experiments he can accomplish. 

-

Jack is collected by the Commission at age 17, after he’s killed thirteen women, and over the next eight years he becomes known around the Commission as one of the most successful temporal assassins around. His 'gift' certainly helps, he's not going to lie.

Then he comes to learn about the Apocalypse case. It’s kinda legendary, amongst operatives and case workers alike: the only record of an employee of the Commission going rogue and not only getting away with it, but trying and succeeding at fucking up another major event.

Those in charge never talk about it, but the rumors still circulate. Jack hears of Five, about his impressive kill count, about the way he was able to take out Cha-Cha and Hazel, some of the highest ranking assassins in the Commission. Most specifically, he hears about Five’s powers, about his ability to teleport without a briefcase. Jack hears about about a group of people, living in the modern day, fucking up any attempts by the Commission to kickstart the Apocalypse back into being by using powers of their own.

Most operatives are avoiding the case with everything they can. No one wants a failure on their record, after all. The risk is too great, despite the payoff being able to say that you maintained the greatest Event in recorded human history.

So Jack volunteers to be Cha-Cha’s new partner. Why wouldn’t he? He’s only with the Commission because they provided him with an opportunity to learn as much as he could about the world and how his ability could be utilized- his rate of success and failure on _their_ terms doesn’t really mean much to him.

Jack wants to see just how much damage he can cause, even indirectly; the Apocalypse is certainly a challenge to take on. There isn't much bigger an experiment one can conduct, after all, than the destruction of the world itself.

And so once he gets to the site, it's easy to isolate out the necessary variables for this experiment. The Commission's scant directives have led him to conclude that Vanya Hargreeves is the center of the Apocalypse, what with the abilities Cha-Cha and he have recently discovered.

The Commission's instructions to kill Five won't do anything to cause the Apocalypse, now- his damage has been done. He's prevented the original start date. Now the point is to trigger Vanya's powers.

Cha-Cha's got a good point about how Vanya Hargreeves' current vulnerabilities seem to be her siblings, and the conclusion follows easily from this observation: they have to take out the Hargreeves siblings.

The point of their mission is to anger Vanya, so she can’t be a victim. Ben and Diego don't work on the first and second time they try, and so they determine to try a different siblings.

Five, from Jack's current observations, is going soft in his young age. His family, described by Cha-Cha as a previously a dangerously powerful motivator, is now his weakness. He's spending too much time talking and hanging out and hugging them, and not enough time training. He's pulling the foolish move of letting his guard down too much, and soon enough he'll be easy enough to take out.

But for now, he's still a pretty legendary assassin. They won't be able to take him on now, but soon- Five's biggest fear is losing his family. If they leave him for second to last, then they should be able to absolutely destroy him. 

But for now, Cha-Cha and Jack narrow down the best possible targets to Luther, Klaus, and Allison. 

Luther's only got super strength, not much else, and as long as they keep Klaus sedated, he won't be able to summon his brother. The same trick will work to keep Allison from using her powers, as well.

Time for the next attempt, and this time, Jack won't let this go wrong.

All of the Hargreeves siblings are going to die, and the world  _is_ going to end. He's going to make sure of it, and after all, he's never failed before.

**Author's Note:**

> We've still got a couple of "upgrades" and Allison's POV to come along...any guesses as to the upgraded powers left in this series, or ideas on how this will end? I'm going to gift the finale of the series to whoever gets it right, just like I did this one.
> 
> Also, comments are definitely welcomed in review of this story! I know this one is short, but it was kinda important to moving the plot along. I hope you guys liked it well enough.


End file.
